June 8th - Balance Updates
Happy Spider-Versus season! We’ve got 5 updates for you this week, including an update to a starter card. Let’s hop right in!
Spider-Man
● [Old] 4/3 - On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.
● [New] 5/4 - On Reveal: Your opponent can’t play cards at this location next turn.
Spider-Man performs very well in multiple decks like High Evolutionary lockdown and Galactus. We want to avoid these kinds of playstyles being too powerful as they are frustrating to play against, so we've decided to adjust Spider-Man to limit his play in combos like Spider-Man into Professor X. While this does put him at the same Cost as his lockdown peer Professor X, we think that their effects are distinct enough that they can both sit at 5-Cost.
Beast
● [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.
● [New] 3/4 - On Reveal: Return your other cards at this location to your hand. They cost 1 less.
Bounce decks with cards like Kitty Pryde, Bast, and Hit-Monkey have been performing very well lately. Beast in particular stood out to us as a very powerful enabler in the deck. We want Beast’s effect to take more investment to get returns, so we’re adjusting him to be a 3-Cost card. This also helps give Falcon more room to spread his wings, as he often felt like a worse Beast without the cost reduction effect.
The Hood
● [Old] 1/-2 - On Reveal: Add a Demon to your hand.
● [New] 1/-3 - On Reveal: Add a Demon to your hand..
Many decks are able to take great advantage of the cheap 6-Power Demon while neutralizing The Hood’s negative Power. We’re making a small nerf to The Hood’s Power to make him more punishing to play if you’re unable to counteract his base Power. Notably, this is actually a buff to Viper decks that hand The Hood over to the opponent to deal with.
Rogue
● [Old] 3/1 - On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.
● [New] 3/2 - On Reveal: Steal an Ongoing ability from a random enemy card at this location.
In a similar vein to our Enchantress buffs, Rogue is a card we’d expect to see more of to counteract powerful Ongoing effects. While it's not surprising that Enchantress is more popular with her higher base Power, more universal coverage, and synergy with cards like Zabu and Lizard, we were surprised to see that Rogue performs poorly even in Silver Surfer decks. We’re giving her a small bump in Power to help her be a more viable tool to counter Ongoing cards.
Medusa
● [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, +2 Power.
● [New] 2/2 - On Reveal: If this is at the middle location, +3 Power.
Players move past many of the starter cards pretty quickly, but most of them make a comeback in a variety of later archetypes. For example, Quicksilver was in a Lockjaw deck for a while, Iron Man sees play in Thanos Ongoing and Mr. Negative, and just recently High Evolutionary brought back all the vanilla cards. Medusa however stands out as a card that sees virtually no play anywhere beyond the early stages of SNAP. Even though she’s consistently a 2/4 currently, her restriction makes her weaker than she may seem. We’re giving her a buff to allow her to better compete with other options at the 2-Cost slot.
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Thanks for reading! We’re continuing to keep a close eye on the game balance, and High Evolutionary in particular. See you all next week for a new patch and the release of Conquest!